Germany: Detective held for killing and eating man

Police officers search the grounds of Detlev Gs home in Saxony. Picture: AP

The suspect, identified only as Detlev G, aged 55, is a handwriting analysis expert with the state of Saxony’s Office of Criminal Investigation. An openly gay officer, Detlev G has admitted murdering a man he met through a internet chat room for people obsessed with cannibalism as a sexual thrill.

According to German media reports the victim was tortured before death as part of a ritualistic sex game.

The victim, according to police, was a 59-year-old man from Hanover who has been missing since the beginning of the month.

The case mirrors that of Armin Meiwes, the “Cannibal of Rothenburg”, who made headlines around the world in 2012 when he killed, dismembered and ate a man he had contacted through a similar online forum.

“The victim had been fantasising about being killed and eaten by someone else since his youth,” Dresden police chief Dieter Kroll said yesterday.

A search of Detlev G’s home on the edge of the Erzgebirge (Ore) Mountains on Wednesday showed that parts of the body were missing.

Detlev G, who was arrested at work on Wednesday, took officers to some woodland where other parts of the corpse were allegedly interred.

Detlev G was married but divorced several years ago and his former wife works in the same office as him. He apparently nurtured fantasies of killing and eating a man for several months and met his victim through the Zambian Meat website.

The site is a forum for people both looking to be killed and eaten, as well as predators offering to do just that. It also offers numerous forms of sexual torture for sadomasochists and their victims.

Detlev G was said to be in a stable homosexual relationship, and had even recently taken out a pension for his partner. But the dark urges brought on by his fantasies of cannibalism led him to murder.

Many internet forums such as Zambian Meat exist in Germany where people can visit to explore their fantasies.

In the case of the victim, it seemed his desires mirrored those of Bernd Brandes, the computer programmer who was dismembered and eaten by Meiwes at his home near Kassel in 2001.

Police said the victim and perpetrator chatted on line, made a date and then he was killed.

A state prosecutor said: “Body parts were found on Wednesday at a property in the state of Saxony in eastern Germany and the 55-year-old man was arrested shortly afterwards. The victim has been missing since the beginning of November.”

Meiwes said at his trial that he was not alone in being drawn by the allure of killing and eating a human being. He said he had “numerous” enquiries from people wanting to be slaughtered and cooked, but many of them backed out at the last minute.

Brandes did not. He arrived at Meiwes’ remote farmhouse home where he drank a cocktail of cough mixture and alcohol. When he was virtually unconscious, Meiwes set up a video camera and taped as he cut off his penis, which he later fried and ate.

He put Brandes into a bath to “bleed out” and settled down to read a Star Trek novel until he was dead. He later cut up his flesh and packaged in his deep freeze and ate a portion of him for the next ten months every day, until he was arrested.

Initially sentenced to eight and a half years in jail, prosecutors successfully appealed and secured a life conviction.

It is understood that police traced the missing man in the Detlev G case back to him through the Zambian Meat website.